Entertainment

Nintendo's Role in the New Mobile Gaming Paradise

This is a fairly important question to consider, I think. The gaming industry clocks in billions of dollars in revenue each year, a good portion of which is devoted to mobile sales. Yet if mobile Web use is going to continue climb at the solid clip, and mobile phones are to be smart and powerful enough to conquer interactive entertainment, is there room for platforms devoted primarily to gaming?

While Sony’s PSP hasn’t seen itself become a phenom of the mobile gaming space, the Nintendo DS is an item which has often been touted as something of a marvel; nearly as cool as the Wii when it first arrived. Nintendo has consistently sold millions for several quarters. And the company will undoubtedly sell more. But just how much more? And if/when momentum slows to a trickle, then a crawl, and then stops, what comes after? Does Nintendo move into software exclusively, bringing Mario, et al. to the iPhone, Android devices, Nokia handhelds, and other systems?

What triggered my interest in this subject isn’t gaming itself. The most I would consider myself is a very occasional gamer. Once in a while a little Sudoku, some Tetris, some chess. Also, I’ve recently been draw to the “Cannon Challenge” [iTunes URL] game freely issued by Discovery for iPhone/iPod touch users. Otherwise my free moments are devoted to other pursuits. No, gaming isn’t really the focus here. Rather, it is the way in which mobile platforms themselves are evolving that is the basis for this comment. They are evolving to the point that Nintendo’s handhelds, and those of its competitor(s), will be no more. Why? Internet connectivity. More precisely, always-on Internet connectivity.

It’s been said constantly for over a year now by various persons well-known and not so well-known: the iPhone is a great gaming platform. Leo Laporte of TWiT, The Tech Guy, and The Lab fame, says so. Regularly. The co-hosts of “Diggnation” offer similar praise for the thing. I’ll say so, too. And by categorial association, I would say a number of other smartphones are similarly equipped to provide gameplay that’s visually impressive and entertaining as well. Indeed, because of computing power alone, it might be argued that the likes of Nintendo won’t be able to extend its legacy in a tangible sense for many more years.

Yes, it’s important to emphasize this new and very big nail in the coffin of convention. It’s a point that has been echoed with increased volume in recent months. The ever-present mobile Web. If game developers take up the task of engineering titles to connect players with one another without limit to place or time - or, reversely, dependent on place and time - the sort of gaming that comes with the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP in their current Wi-Fi-enabled form, is going to quickly become outdated.

Of course, Sony has a convenient bridge to the next era of mobile gaming in its partnership with Ericsson in the mobile phone world. That is something Sony should address, and sooner rather than later. But Nintendo, interestingly enough, doesn’t have that option. Not yet, at least. And rather than establish exclusives with one handset maker or another, it may well be better off investing little to naught in hardware and focus instead on publishing titles compatible with the modern smartphone platforms of today.

Not too long ago a report released by comScore noted that US mobile subscribers’ had essentially balanced pan-Atlantic rate of 3G adoption with residents of Europe, after years of lagging behind. If comScore’s numbers are anything accurate, they only add weight to the line that mobile phone gaming is the logical extension to come from the market. The next cash cow. Naturally, this requires that consumers take to the all-in-one approach to mobile communications, which they’ve been slow to do. But the advent of Nokia’s newest N-Series devices as well as those from Apple and Samsung, etc., have done much to whet the consumer palate. So much so that a migration is simply inevitable.

To be sure, this is a good thing. Change rarely does good things for nostalgia, but it enables progress to continue on. The sheer volume of possible applications of GPS- and 3G- and 4G-infused networking, let alone gameplay, piques the interest of millions of people. Privacy is of course an ever-present concern. But gamers have made plain their desire to take the multiplayer experience as far as it can allow. That has been the case with Xbox Live fans, PC-based MMORPG devotees, and it will also be true for mobile gamers, too. Heck, the possibilities given via the Nintendo DS specifically have intrigued a global supply of users. So gaming over wireless cellular telephony spectrum is really just upping the ante. It is very much within reach.

Now, there is a limit to what you can do given that sort of infrastructure and personal componentry. A small screen can only provide so much opportunity to developers. But the social aspect is where things go big. It’s more a matter of developers’ thinking anew about the handheld world, and seeing what they’ve already constructed in the realm of iPhone and Android, they presumably won’t be short for ingenuity for many years to come.

Which brings us back to the future that Nintendo - and to lesser extent, Sony - will encounter and be forced to navigate. Mobile gaming is critical to its business, regardless of its clear success with the Wii. Will we see Mario soon emerge on the N96, a BlackBerry’s touchscreen, the iPhone, and a Sony Ericsson Walkman of some sort? I’ll venture to say yes. Somewhat soon, anyway. It’s only sensible that they make it happen. If only because it has become increasingly evident that smartphones themselves are now being designed to be the next generation of all-purpose playgrounds, and Nintendo could well make a fortune introducing itself and its trademark craftwork to the wider world of pocket computers and the cloud they inhabit.

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